Remnant of a gamer
by Grademaster
Summary: Self inserts always interested me. Being in one wasn't what I expected, though. Most people would be freaking out, but with the powers of the gamer it gets much easier. Let's see how much I can screw up the storyline. RWBY/THE GAMER CROSSOVER. CANCELLED. REWRITE IN PROGRESS
1. Chapter 1 - New game

Level 1

It was late at night in my house. Or early in the morning depending on whether you cared to think about it. I certainly didn't. I had fallen in love with the story of RWBY and had just found out about the chibi episodes. In the wake of the volume 4 ending I had fallen back into my familiar boredom and needed something to fill the void called free time. Popcorn and humor filled that void fantastically. Fanfictions filled it too but I had read most of the ones I was interested in. Sure there was always more but after a while you get tired of it. All of these factors worked in tandem to lead me to watch the series at 1 in the morning in my bed. Sadly, however "Why am I awake? I have to get up tomorrow." Was in the way of animated adorableness and buttery goodness. Oh wait! All the popcorn's gone. Now there was no excuse. I had to go to bed or sleep till noon again… But then again – NOPE! Time to sleep. And with that thought process I shut off the lights and went to bed.

I woke up groggily on my cold hard bed… Wait, my bed was only moderately hard and certainly not cold. With that my eyes shot open quickly and I saw that I was outside and in a forest. What the hell happened last night?! In a flash I came to several conclusions as I wiped the sleep from my eyes. 1. This was a dream, which was unlikely, as I didn't dream often, 2. I was kidnapped and left in a forest, which was more unlikely since I wasn't very important and nobody I knew was interesting enough to pull off such a large-scale prank, and 3. Something batshit crazy was going on. Option number 3 was proven to be correct as a blue screen popped up in my face.

 **Welcome to the game, Grady!**

 **Due to your boring as dirt life a certain higher power decided to screw with you! Isn't that fun? You've been transported to the world of Remnant from that show you've watched. It was decided to gift you a power to aid you in your new life as you have nothing to guide you as of now. So you were given the gift of games, also called the gamer.**

 **TAP FOR NEXT PAGE (1/3)**

" …WHAT THE HELL?!" Was my general thought process as I stared at the window in front of me. "Magical blue windows don't just appear in front of you… lets see where this goes." And with that I tapped the screen.

 **This gamer ability will be the key to your continued existence in remnant. There is no tutorial, as this follows the rules used in the manga called "The Gamer". Inventory, stats, levels, etc. is all there. They are activated upon voice command or thought command. We kind higher powers have given you this so you may be our soap opera for your continued life.**

 **TAP FOR NEXT PAGE (2/3)**

The thought that I would be peeped on by stalker gods was EXTREMELY uncomfortable for me to think about so I pushed those concerns into the back of my mind and I instead recalled my memories of the gamer. The general idea was "git gud or die" with the addition of video game powers. I was feeling better about accepting this new life of mine and pressed the page button one more time

 **You may have concerns about your previous life. Don't worry; a clone of you is continuing your pathetic existence as a measly teenager just as you would. However, the more pressing matter of your survival is at stake. In return for leaving you in forest populated by grimm we have gifted you with two weapons most suited for you and activated your aura (NOTE: The gamer is not your semblance). Follow the quests and head west for a mile or so. Good luck!**

 **END MESSAGE**

"I hate and love this" was my first thought after finishing the text box, which automatically disappeared after I read the last word. I hated it because these so-called "Higher powers" were real assholes and were blatantly condescending; yet I was in a world I idolized and had the perfect power for survival. My family wasn't even affected! That is, unless this was all a lie, which was pretty hard to believe at this point. "Time to get to business" I thought. "Stats"

 **Grady Andrews**

 **Title: The Gamer**

 **Level – 1**

 **HP – 91/91 (+.91/min)**

 **AP – 195/195 (+22.1/min)**

 **STR -5 (+30%)=6.5**

 **VIT -7 (+30%)=9.1**

 **DEX -8 (+30%)=10.4**

 **INT -15 (+30%)=19.5**

 **WIS -17 (+30%) =22.1**

 **LUK -9**

 **CHR -9**

 **POINTS - 0**

 **LIEN – 0**

"That's…Really good I think." For a level one that was pretty weak in physical stats but those mental ones were off the charts! The aura also helped. I immediately decided to be a mage class or aura warrior or something based around aura. This was all too good for me. With my semb-I mean, ability, I was able to manipulate spells and such instinctually and learn complex techniques that would require memorization that would take lots of training to use. That and limited aura was the only downfall of relying on your aura. Reliability and aura. With my ability, though, I could pull off any fancy tricks with aura as well as regenerate it pretty fast. I then stopped that train of thought. Using magic or advanced aura techniques was high-level stuff. I wasn't supposed to know that stuff, other than basic fire bolts and such using dust. I needed to blend in with the first years at beacon, which, assuming I'm entertainment for some jackass gods, I will be.

 **Correctly guessing your divine plan and thinking on how to do it has given you 2 WIS**

That helps! And two?! That helps a lot! So anyways, I will be going to beacon and I will need a weapon to blend in and not expose my ability to anyone I don't trust. I'll probably tell my team at beacon so I don't have to hold back while fighting Torchwick or Cinder. Back to the present though, I was in a forest with grimm and my aura was probably going to draw some soon. And with that…"Inventory!"

And with that an inventory screen popped up. There were tabs labeled at the top with things like "Weapons, armor, apparel, and several more unorthodox ones like misc. for what I assumed meant miscellaneous and recent loot, which was reminded me - "Auto loot on" I said out loud. A blue box briefly appeared saying auto loot was turned on and I grinned. Explaining grimm dropping money would be annoying and difficult. I focused on the tabs again and noticed a little one exponent in weapons. Going to that tab I found a spear just sitting in there. I equipped it and found in my hand in a white light, like when an item breaks in the sword art online anime but in reverse. I studied the spear for a moment, going over the design of it when I got a message.

 **New skill acquired!**

 **Observe**

 **-Cost: Free; Active skill-**

 **Through continuous observation observe object or people to acquire information on the targeted entity. More information available upon higher levels.**

 **Spear – Just an average spear with a metal tip that looks a lot like a triangle. Designed more for stabbing than slicing.**

 **Durability – 300/300 - Base damage - 45**

Oh good, I needed that skill. I'm pretty sure that I got more information from a glance at the spear with my own eyes than I did with observe though. Damage probably changed with vital spots and whatnot. Then there was armor and all that so I let the issue go. Then I noticed another little exponent in the inventory screen, this one a two under skill books. My grin from earlier grew wider as the thought of getting free skills and what they would be was like a Christmas present for me. I opened up the tab and used observe on the book.

 **Skill book – Basic aura attacks by Monty Oum**

 **Aura blast**

 **-Cost: 20 AP; Active skill-**

 **A blast of aura straight from your soul designed more to push an enemy away than to hurt them. Not effective at anything but close combat.**

 **Damage: 25 + Knockback**

 **Aura arrow**

 **-Cost: 10 AP; Active skill-**

 **An arrow made of a bit of Aura and flung at an enemy. Ripped off directly from the manga. These work best at long range.**

 **Damage: 15 (per arrow); Arrows: 2**

 **Aura bolt**

 **-Cost: 35 AP; Active skill-**

 **A lance of aura flung at your opponent at high speed. This bolt has a lot of mass and as such causes a small shockwave upon impact. You should bench-press this and get manly, chicken wings.**

 **Damage: 70 + minor shockwave**

I cringed a bit at the chicken arms insult and looked at my skinny arms. Even with aura I was weaker than average Joe. I remembered in my former life my little brother could overpower me. And my classmates. And my underclassmen. And I'm pretty sure my grandma or grandpa. But HA! I'm smart! Look at me now! I'm a badass in the making here! A badass who gets teased by his ability and even enhanced can't match an average guy in arm wrestling.

That the book was written by Monty Oum, one of the leading minds behind RWBY, wrote it was curious, but the need for skills necessary for my survival was more important than who wrote it at the moment. I then absorbed the skill book. The rush of knowledge was almost euphoric. It was like it was a part of me now, which I supposed it was. I flung two arrows at a tree with a wave of my hand as a test and smiled as they dug into a tree a bit. I would NOT want to be hit with one of those. They were easy to aim too. It was like hand – eye coordination but more like focus and it shall happen. I checked the skills screen and saw the exp. meter had risen about 10% on the arrows. Since it was easy to make the arrows and use them I decided to train them along my hike to Vale by flinging them at trees, waiting for my aura to recharge, and flinging some more. I might as well do something on the way. Just hiking on it's own was pretty boring. I learned that on several camping trips with my father. Also, I might as well keep my AP regeneration working. I needed to keep a pool of aura for any grimm that are bound to attack. I checked the sun's position to find west and headed that direction.

 **Quest acquired!**

 **Follow the yellow brick road**

 **It's dangerous in the woods. Make it to the city and let your adventure really begin.**

 **Objectives**

 **-Make it to Vale**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Kill a beowolf (500 lien)**

 **Rewards: 500 XP, safety, ?**

 **Time limit: 6 Hours**

 **Failure: Death by grimm**

Seems like it's time to go.

 **1 Hours later**

 **Aura arrows leveled up! Aura arrows leveled up! Aura arrows leveled up! ! Aura arrows leveled up!**

Hiking was boring. Even with the satisfaction of the well aimed aura arrows, which now did 23 damage courtesy of the four level ups. I also observed some trees and birds and stuff that I saw, leveling it twice in the process. The ability was free and useful so why not level it? After a while going west I had realized I didn't need to walk since I had boundless stamina and started sprinting through the brush. I got a skill for running and even gained a point in DEX and VIT for jumping over some obstacles and just running in general!

 **New skill acquired!**

 **Run**

 **-Cost: 5 AP/min; Active/passive skill-**

 **It's as said, which is running. You run. That's it. This does not affect your speed when trying to walk fast or crawl or anything like that.**

 **+5% speed when running passively**

 **+25% speed when actively running**

After a few minutes though, more like 10 or 15 if I had to guess, in which I stopped casting aura arrows so often and brought it down to a bit more than once a minute, I tripped on a tree root and fell on my face. I lost some HP and got some dirt on my clothes. I then decided to go at a cautious jog and be a little quieter. I kept the skill and aura arrow training though. My level in the aura skill increased a few times too while casting.

 **Aura – lv.4**

 **-Passive skill-**

 **To defend against the dark man used the light of their soul to give strength beyond that of the unenlightened.**

 **Effects: +34% STR, DEX, VIT, INT, and WIS**

 **Allows control over body's aura**

After a while though I heard something and froze. It was the sound of leaves and twigs breaking, and this time it wasn't me. I listened very carefully and heard a few things. Birds chirping, my own heartbeat, and a sort of panting, although faint. A blue screen appeared but I ignored it for now. I turned towards the panting sound and saw a beowolf crouched as if ready to pounce. It was a scary looking thing. I'd seen the show's animation of it, of course, but seeing it in person was still scary as hell. It was a tall and lanky thing. There wasn't much muscle though as far as I could tell. It wasn't as wolf-like as I'd expected. The limbs were long with smooth inky black fur and claws colored bone-white. There were spines on it's back and a bony exoskeleton around it. I was glad I had a spear since a sword wouldn't be able to cut through that stuff. The mask looked a bit weaker, but I had earned my chicken arms and they wouldn't let me cut through that stuff I'm pretty sure. Observe casted automatically for me while I inspected the beowolf.

 **Beowolf**

 **Title: none**

 **Level 5**

 **HP: 200/200**

 **Observe leveled up!**

I kept my eyes locked with the predator's red lights in it's mask and we both stood at a standstill. The moment was broken as I crouched down a little into what I was pretty sure was a decent combat stance. Two blue screens appeared which I ignored. It was great how I could just dismiss the screens temporarily with a thought. The beowolf also crouched down low. Was it mimicking me or was it just a good combat stance? I was pretty sure it was the latter. Another moment passed as we looked for weaknesses in each other. I don't know what the beowolf saw in my defense, but I thought of several ways to approach this. The first way was to put a few arrows through the gaps in the armor or the legs. Probably the legs because slowing the thing down would help me out a lot. It might piss it off, though, which could be hard to handle. Then I would get in with the spear if I think I'm strong and fast enough, or more arrows if its pissed. The second way was to get in close and personal with the spear. I'd rather not do this but I guess I could if I have to. I should poke the grimm a bit though. No heavy stabs or the spear could get caught. I also had aura blast if things get dicey. The last option was the stupid one. Just hail the thing in a bolt, or more if It's alright. Then I'd lob some arrows at it while it's stunned by the shockwave effect. I decided on option one.

I made the first move, rapidly casting aura arrow twice in a row and hitting three times. the first was a bit off and hit a bit above the knee, and the next two hit it in the thigh. The arrows hissed a bit as they made contact with the flesh of the grimm, probably because the arrows were made of aura, and some black blood spurted out in a few droplets. The grimm was dodging at the second arrow, but, while it was pretty damn fast, it still got grazed by the fourth one, leaving a small cut. The health of the grimm was still pretty high at 142. Base damage was probably based on torso shots or something. I'd debate it after the fight. After the dodge, which was really more like a strafe, the grimm rushed at me in an arc on my right. The grimm made a lunge with a swipe of it's right claw and I dodged to my right. I gained a foothold by digging my shoe's toe into the dirt, surprising myself by my capability, and jabbed at the grimm's exposed neck. My body seemed to help out with this, as I did this instinctually. I felt like I knew the basics of what I was doing as the spearhead dug into the neck. Another spurt of blood came, getting over my clothes a bit. A message came but not in the form of a window, but more like a thought in my head that went "Vital spot hit!" Observe said that hit did a LOT of damage. A quick observe said the grimm was at 54 health now. I didn't think I would do this well! Seriously, I was joking when I thought myself a badass when I joked into the chicken arms thing, but seriously! Even with my pathetic strength I had managed a good hit in. However, after the jab and my happy thoughts the grimm turned quicker than I thought it could and lowered it's head to my leg. I jerked my left leg back to avoid getting bitten and realized what I had done. Without my footing I couldn't land a lethal blow on the grimm. I could, however, use an aura blast on the grimm. I did so and the beowolf went tumbling back. It rolled a little and looked a bit dazed. I hesitated in pressing my advantage, remembering how it almost took my leg as a chew toy, and looked at the grim. It hadn't taken much damage from the tumble. It did, however, seem a bit more hesitant to fight me and it's eyes looked dimmer than before. It approached me slower this time and a bit more carefully than before. "Screw it" I thought, and shot two more aura arrows at the grimm. It wasn't expecting this for whatever reason. Maybe it had thought I wanted to use my spear more, or maybe it only thought the spear was a threat. For whatever reason the arrows hit in the chest. I got another message about a vital hit, most likely the lung, and watched the grimm fall, couch some blood, and stop moving once and for all.

"Wow" was my only thought as I looked at the grimm. The body had become…well, gloopy, I suppose, and had quickly liquefied and emitted a sort of black vapor into the air around it. Thinking back to the fight it had only taken a few seconds. Maybe ten or so in total. It had seemed like much longer than that though. The grimm had now almost entirely vaporized now, leaving a few blotches of black liquid that were also vaporizing. Suddenly a few blue windows appeared in front of me. I started with the first one.

 **Battle won!**

 **Enemies: 1x beowolf**

 **Loot: 56x lien, beowolf tooth, 126 XP**

 **Level up!**

Oh, right. I forgot that enemies dropped money. I don't know what to do with the beowolf tooth so I decided to look at it later. I was surprisingly tired after that fight. Not physically, but mentally. Maybe I could meditate and let some skills run themselves, like an aura shield or elementals, if those existed like in the gamer manga. Now time to check those other windows.

 **New skill acquired!**

 **Detect**

 **-Cost: free; Active/Passive-**

 **The ability to sense others around you without seeing them visually. If someone has the intent to harm others you will detect their bloodlust. If not hostile to others, people and creatures are harder to sense. This skill is free, but is enhanced with focus on your senses.**

 **+10% Efficiency with sensing others**

 **+35% efficiency when active**

 **Polearm Proficiency**

 **-Passive-**

 **Your general aptitude in polearms. These include halberds, spears, and the like. This also applies to mechashift polearms. The bonuses applied by this skill stack with the bonuses provided by other fighting styles.**

 **+10%STR, VIT, and DEX when wielding a polearm in combat.**

 **Usable moves: Stab, slash, and charge**

 **Stance**

 **-Passive-**

 **Your footwork and coordination with your lower and upper body in making a solid combat stance.**

 **-5% chance to be knocked down by powerful blows**

 **+10% coordination in your body**

 **Aura arrow has leveled up! Aura arrow has leveled up! Aura blast has leveled up! Polearm proficiency has leveled up! Polearm proficiency has leveled up! Stance has leveled up!**

 **Due to Physical strain your STR has increased by 2**

 **Due to coordination in your strikes your DEX has increased by 1**

 **Due to plotting out weak-points and acquiring a strategy your INT has increased by 1**

Wow again! I didn't think fighting a single low-level beowolf would be so beneficial. I had a sinking feeling that the skills would get harder to level as they progressed though; the base stats too. That would be too good. Now that I don't feel as exhausted I can check that tooth I got.

 **Beowolf tooth**

 **-Miscellaneous-**

 **A tooth from a beowolf that can be used for a variety of purposes. Mainly for custom ammunition, medicinal crafting, and other more unorthodox crafts.**

That told me quite a lot. Mainly that the tooth was useless to me right now. I'm getting sick of being in the middle of the woods though, and want to meet some other people. Time to set out again!

 **10 minutes later**

Vale is…well…big. I know it can't compare to the bigger cities on earth like New York or Chicago, but there's a big wall just…there. There's a road too. I should get on that and just walk in. I started doing so. The stone road feels weird after the twigs and loose dirt of the forest. Nobody stops me as I walk through an arch to get into the city.

 **Quest completed!**

 **Follow the yellow brick road**

 **Objectives**

 **-Make it to Vale (Completed)**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Kill a beowolf (Completed)**

 **Time limit: 6 hours**

 **Rewards: 500 XP, 500 lien, skill book: ID create/escape**

 **Level up!**

 **Quest acquired!**

 **Beefing up**

 **You're pretty weak as of now. Tomorrow you'll need some skills to help out at all. Get to level 10. (Hint: Use the ID's)**

 **Objectives**

 **-Reach level 10**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Acquire new skills (0/3)**

 **Time limit: 33 hours**

 **Rewards: 1000 XP**

 **Quest acquired!**

 **Gearing up**

 **Basic clothes aren't good armor. That spear could be better too. And pretty much everything else about you. Vale wasn't destroyed in a day, though so the "everything else" will have to wait.**

 **Objectives**

 **-Acquire a spear of your own**

 **-Acquire armor of your own**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Get a gun of some sort**

 **Time limit: 33 hours**

 **Rewards: 1000 XP, 1000 lien**

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED! The level up is nice too, and I'll use some skill points later when I've trained a bit more in my physical stats. My INT and WIS though… If I need an edge in the ID's then I'll spend some points on them. It was also good that I had the rest of today and until 9pm tomorrow. First order of business, though, is to get that new gear. "Map" I thought. In front of me was then a window similar to Google maps. It had the search bar and everything. I searched for a weapon smith in town and found a few. I went with the closest one I could find.

The shop was pretty basic. It reminded me of one from medieval times, but the drills and other electrical tools threw off the feel of it. There was a burly looking man behind the counter playing a game on his scroll, which, if I remember, was like a cellphone but better. "Excuse me?" I asked. "This got the man's attention. "Eh? Oh! Welcome to Arnold's smithy. Are you looking for a weapon?" "Yeah, I'm looking for a mechashift spear with an off-hand shotgun at the point. Can you do that?" The man's eyes seemed interested as I gave my explanation of what I wanted. That is, a spear with a shotgun at the front. "Give the shotgun some knockback too, please." This way when I stab a grimm I can fire the shotgun to get the tip out quickly and do a lot more damage in the process. The man seemed to get the general idea, and he nodded in confirmation. " Got it. And the mechashift?" "A shortsword." The man nodded appreciatively. "I've got plenty of spare parts from old weapons that were commissioned. I'll have it done in maybe an hour and a half. The adjustments come free with the weapon, and you're getting a discount because I'll be using some spare parts, which I assure you are in fine condition. All in all it comes out at… ehm, let's say 480 lien. You won't find a better price around with the kind of quality I have." The price seemed great for what I was getting. Mechashift weapons weren't just found at your local CVS. I was lucky with the spare parts since I only had 556 lien at the moment. "Deal. And could you make the shaft a sky blue, and the tip silver?" "I can do the sky blue, but I'm not going to polish your spear for you. That'll be an extra 50 lien though." It was still a good deal, so I agreed and left the shop. With only 26 lien I doubted I could buy a pair of shoes, much less armor. Before going to the weapons shop I had looked at the prices of mundane things. A burger could go between 5 or 6 lien, a shirt for 20 or 40, and those shoes were maybe 60 or so. All in all, a single lien went for a bit more than a dollar. This meant that the super spear I had bought was maybe 700$, which was really cheap! Maybe the shopkeeper wanted a break from making cameras that make holograms, or stuffing a chain gun into a handbag. I felt a little bad for the guy at that thought. How the hell does that even work, anyways? That was for that poor soul to figure out. Right now I had my own problems. Namely, cash. I could use the create ID skill to get it, and get XP too. So let's do that! I grabbed the skill book I had gotten for arriving in Vale and absorbed it, gaining two skills in the process.

 **New skill acquired!**

 **Create ID**

 **-Active: 50 AP -**

 **Make a pocket dimension for training against enemies who drop XP, items, and the like, or an empty one for various purposes.**

 **Transports you into a pocket dimension of your choosing**

 **Available ID's: Empty ID, Beowolf ID**

 **Escape ID**

 **-Active: free-**

 **Leave your pocket dimension for the world of Remnant. May only be used in an ID of your or others creation.**

 **Escapes an ID**

The skills were as basic as they come. Just make a dimension for training and leave when you're done. I activated the skill and saw everything fade to black around me.

 **STATS**

 **Grady Andrews**

 **Title: The Gamer**

 **Level – 3**

 **HP – 191/191 (+.91/min)**

 **AP – 395/395 (+22.1/min)**

 **STR -7 (+30%)=9.1**

 **VIT -8 (+30%)=10.4**

 **DEX -10 (+30%)=13**

 **INT -16 (+30%)=20.8**

 **WIS -19 (+30%) =24.7**

 **LUK -9**

 **CHR -9**

 **POINTS - 10**

 **LIEN – 26**

 **SKILLS**

 **Observe –lv.4**

 **\- Cost: Free; Active skill -**

 **Through continuous observation observe object or people to acquire information on the targeted entity. More information available upon higher levels.**

 **Aura – lv.6**

 **-Passive skill-**

 **To defend against the dark man used the light of their soul to give strength beyond that of the unenlightened.**

 **Effects: +36% STR, DEX, VIT, INT, and WIS**

 **Allows control over body's aura**

 **Aura blast – lv.1**

 **-Cost: 20 AP; Active skill-**

 **A blast of aura straight from your soul designed more to push an enemy away than to hurt them. Not effective at anything but close combat.**

 **Damage: 30 + Knockback**

 **Aura arrow - lv.5 (50/130)**

 **-Cost: 10 AP; Active skill-**

 **An arrow made of a bit of Aura and flung at an enemy. Ripped off directly from the manga. These work best at long range.**

 **Damage: 23 (per arrow); Arrows: 2**

 **Aura bolt – lv.1**

– **-Cost: 35 AP; Active skill-**

 **A lance of aura flung at your opponent at high speed. This bolt has a lot of mass and as such causes a small shockwave upon impact. You should bench-press this and get manly, chicken wings.**

 **Damage: 70 + minor shockwave**

 **Run – lv.2**

 **-Cost: 5 AP/min; Active/passive skill-**

 **It's as said, which is running. You run. That's it. This does not affect your speed when trying to walk fast or crawl or anything like that.**

 **+5% speed when running passively**

 **+25% speed when actively running**

 **Detect**

 **-Cost: free; Active/Passive-**

 **The ability to sense others around you without seeing them visually. If someone has the intent to harm others you will detect their bloodlust. If not hostile to others, people and creatures are harder to sense. This skill is free, but is enhanced with focus on your senses.**

 **+10% Efficiency with sensing others**

 **+35% efficiency when active**

 **Polearm Proficiency**

 **-Passive-**

 **Your general aptitude in polearms. These include halberds, spears, and the like. This also applies to mechashift polearms. The bonuses applied by this skill stack with the bonuses provided by other fighting styles.**

 **+10%STR, VIT, and DEX when wielding a polearm in combat.**

 **Usable moves: Stab, slash, and charge**

 **Stance**

 **-Passive-**

 **Your footwork and coordination with your lower and upper body in making a solid combat stance.**

 **-5% chance to be knocked down by powerful blows**

 **+10% coordination in your body**

 **Aura arrow has leveled up! Aura arrow has leveled up! Aura blast has leveled up! Polearm proficiency has leveled up! Polearm proficiency has leveled up! Stance has leveled up!**

 **Due to Physical strain your STR has increased by 2**

 **Due to coordination in your strikes your DEX has increased by 1**

 **Due to plotting out weak-points and acquiring a strategy your INT has increased by 1**


	2. Chapter 2 - Grinding

**AN: I put out that first chapter as a sort of test run for the series to see if I should post more or leave it alone and try something else. As it turns out, people like it. I'm thinking of posting the chapters weekly whenever possible. Not exactly every week, but something around a week. With school starting and being a generally lazy person chapters might have to wait until I think for a second and go "Oh shit." Most of the time, though, I'll try to make these weekly.**

Level 2

Going into the ID felt strange. Like my soul did a backflip is the best way to describe it. As the darkness faded around my vision the new dimension was pretty shocking. The whole block was in ruins and looked abandoned. The effect was eerie with the pseudo-dark lighting. The shop I was just in was in ruins too. There were holes in the walls and everything. Forgetting the scenery for now I needed a plan to deal with the beowolves that were sure to come. If they were in a pack I should probably shoot some aura bolts at them to scatter them and then pick them off with aura arrows. I'd rather not use the spear much since I would have plenty of time to practice that at beacon. Since I was alone I could be stealthy and ambush them. There wasn't anywhere to hide except in buildings and…the rooftop. That was perfect! Just sit up there and snipe them with my aura stuff! I immediately started climbing the shop's wall. It wasn't too hard since there were holes and indents along it. It was kind of fun, really. It would be better if there wasn't near-silence and the creepy lighting. Being on the roof was kind of nice, though. The lighting seemed creepy at street-level, but it was more like a permanent sunset. After admiring the sunset for a moment I got my head back in the game. Heh, Yang would approve of that one. I crouched down and activated my detect skill. Focusing for a second, I heard some snuffles a few buildings down. I stayed low and as quiet as possible, earning a skill for it.

 **Stealth**

 **-Active Cost: 5AP/min-**

 **Staying quiet is great for many things. Pranks, sneak attacks, and peeking on girls to name a few.**

 **-30% sound when sneaking**

 **15% harder to be noticed**

 **+100% damage when initiating a sneak attack**

That was useful I suppose, so I turned it on. The difference was immediate, and I could tell that I would be sneakier. I don't know why but I felt like my ability was pushing me to do mischievous things. Peeping at an academy of super soldier teenagers seemed like a very bad idea, and morally questionable of course. Making my way to the edge of the third building I peeked over the edge and saw a beowolf sniffing at a pile of rubble. I saw observe activate as I stared at it.

 **Young beowolf**

 **Title: None**

 **Level 3**

 **HP: 150/150**

I considered shooting it with some arrows but that wouldn't kill it off the bat, which was not what I wasn't that high off street-level though; only one story. So I jumped off the roof. The beowolf seemed to hear my jump and raised it's head, but I fell faster than it moved. I fell spear-first onto the beowolf's neck, earning that sneak attack bonus and vital spot bonus. The beowolf instantly died, netting me about a hundred XP and some lien. I grinned and climbed back up the roof.

 **Accurately hitting vital spots has given you 1 DEX**

 **Sneak leveled up!**

I have a feeling I'll be abusing this technique for a while.

 **Level up! Level up! Level up! Level up!**

 **Sneak leveled up! Sneak leveled up! Sneak leveled up!**

 **Polearm proficiency leveled up!**

 **Continuous physical activity has given you 2 VIT and 1 STR!**

 **Taking a safe(ish) and beneficial training has given you 1 WIS and INT!**

I was pretty happy with how my sneak attacks were going. Climbing the walls of the buildings was strenuous work, though, and gained me some points. However, I didn't fight the beowolf packs, but I really wanted to. I was sure that the alphas would yield a lot of points, and loot too! Speaking of loot, one of the grimm I killed dropped a skill book called shadow rush.

 **New skill unlocked!**

 **-Shadow rush-**

 **-Active Cost: 40 AP-**

 **Lunge at your opponent in a mass of darkness and attack them. You are harder to hit and you hit harder in this attack.**

 **+65% Damage in rush**

 **+35% Speed in rush**

 **Blur effect**

I played with the skill on my own, and found that my body left a little wispy trail of darkness and had a little bit of solid shadows surrounding me as I was rushing. It was a cool skill, and it filled the bonus portion of my "Beefing up" quest, but it was a little expensive to be used often.

After an hour of grinding the lone beowolves I had picked up the mechashift spear and it could do work! The point was pretty sharp, and it was durable too, as a quick observe told me. The guy I commissioned it from gave me a couple magazines for free. He really was a nice guy.

 **Grady's Mechashift spear – A good quality spear with a 16-gage shotgun attachment with a 5-round magazine and a sword form. The spearhead is very sharp and made of a titanium-Steel alloy. The shaft is made of steel with rubber handholds, and is hollow to allow the sword form. The two handholds have buttons to allow the mechashift and firing of the shotgun mechanism.**

 **Durability: 1489/1500**

All in all I was very happy with the work done on the spear after the shopkeeper and I adjusted it. I hadn't used the shotgun or sword form yet but I liked it so far. I was pretty sure it'd work fine. There was clearly room for improvement, though. The tip wasn't as polished or sharp as I'd like it, and the sword form wasn't as smooth or fast a transition as I'd like. The shotgun attachment seemed all right but I'm sure Ruby would have something to do to it. I wasn't much of a weapons guy. I preferred the aura techniques I used, but for now I knew I'd have to train my spear enough to hide my abilities. Standing out too much could affect canon negatively.

Besides the plans for the future I had to focus on what I wanted to do right now. Playing it safe wasn't fast enough for my liking. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to kill an alpha. So I climbed to the top of the closest building, which was easier now that I was a bit stronger. It wasn't hard to find one. It only took a minute of looking around. Two beowolves were pawing through some rubble for whatever reason, and three in another pile. The alpha was alone closer to the second group. It looked a lot like a normal grimm, but the bony facemask was longer in the snout and had more teeth than your average beowolf. There were also studs of bone scattered symmetrically across it's body. Besides those obvious signs it also looked to have more muscle than your average beowolf. Although it was more muscular it also looked a little sleeker, too. This was definitely going to lead to injury if I wasn't careful. I had learned by a stealth kill gone bad that when I was hurt by beowolves the damage went into my HP, which wouldn't work for me if I got hit. Apparently aura doesn't block hits unless you channel it to. So I reached inside myself and got a hold of my aura. I stretched it around my body just above my skin and felt it take hold there. I did this all along my body like a second skin made of aura. I opened my eyes and saw a screen in front of me.

 **New skill acquired!**

 **-Aura reinforcement-**

 **-Active (20AP/min)/Passive-**

 **A basic skill any aura user should have. Shroud yourself in your aura to nullify injuries and heal faster.**

 **Passively increases HP regeneration by 20%**

 **Increases STR, VIT, and DEX by 20% when active**

 **Reduces damage taken by 40% when active**

 **Aura has leveled up!**

Ah, there it is. I'd thought aura would always do that whether I intended for it to or not. This is pretty useful skill for close combat. I can also keep it running with my aura regeneration from my wisdom 24/7 and still regenerate 6 aura points per minute. Yeah, I think I'll just keep the reinforcement skill running all the time.

At that it's time to attack. I decided to target the three beowolves at the rubble pile with an aura bolt and some aura arrows to finish them off. Then I'd jump down to the other two beowolves from the building above, stealth-killing one and blasting another away with aura blast. While that wolf is knocked back I'd either shadow rush it and stab it's eye if it's off-balance, or, if it's fallen down I'd charge the alpha with some aura arrows or an aura bolt. I'd noticed that I gained 50 HP, 100 AP, and some regeneration to my aura pool and Health. I could just spam aura bolts at everyone and destroy them. The first pack just felt like it should be special. So I made an overly complex plan. I checked my stats to show how much better I was than before.

 **STATS**

 **Grady Andrews**

 **Title: The Gamer**

 **Level – 7**

 **HP – 430 (+2.55/min)**

 **AP – 821/221 (+61/min)**

 **STR -8 (+30%)=10.4**

 **VIT -10(+30%)=13**

 **DEX -11 (+30%)=14.3**

 **INT -17 (+30%)=22.1**

 **WIS -20 (+30%) =26**

 **LUK -9**

 **CHR -9**

 **POINTS - 30**

 **LIEN – 6,694**

So yeah, I probably could've demolished a beowolf pack a while ago. I liked being cautious though. Even going in without armor felt like a risk to me, though my overleveled stats would protect me, but those alphas were no joke.

 **Alpha beowolf**

 **Title: Leader of the pack - +20% damage dealt by other beowolves when the alpha is alive. +20% damage dealt by alpha when the pack is dead.**

 **Level 12**

 **HP: 1200**

I could probably deal with it. My plan to leave that one beowolf alive was only there to prevent the leader of the pack buff from activating. There wasn't much more to do now but get cracking.

From the start the plan went well. I wasn't detected by any beowolves while sneaking over to the group of two. I readied my aura bolt and shot it. I was a bit worried about whether I'd be able to aim it well since I hadn't used it before, but it proved as easy as using the aura arrows. It did take a little longer to make though; maybe half a second to make compared to the near-instantaneous creation and firing of the aura arrows. The effect it had when it hit more than made up for the slower creation. The bolt hit one of the beowolves head on and killed it instantly. The bolt's impact into the corpse let out a satisfying boom and knocked the unsuspecting beowolves surrounding their pack-mate onto their sides and a little ways away from the blast. But then my eyes widened as I realized that the shockwave wasn't big enough to do any serious damage. It wasn't any sort of explosive, but a bigger, faster version of aura arrow made like a javelin. I reacted to the still-alive beowolves with two more aura bolts, killing them both in the second it took to make the bolts. By that time, however, the other beowolves had figured out where I was. The alpha ran at frightening speeds towards me. I wondered for a second "what's it gonna do? Bark at me?" unfortunately the alpha didn't slow down, and crashed into the building I was standing on, causing it to grow unstable. The hell?! Wasn't that supposed to be an ursa's job? The other two beowolves figured out their leader's plan and did the same. The building tilted perilously towards where the beowolves were and I jumped at the last second, stumbling a little and looking at my surroundings. The two young beowolves were on my right and running towards me, while the alpha was on the right and doing the same. I ran towards the two beowolves and threw an aura bolt. The beowolves had apparently figured out how they worked, though, and the bolt only grazed the one I had aimed it at. I then activated a shadow rush and felt my legs move a lot faster. I shifted my spear into it's shortsword form a second before we made contact and cut deep into it's side as I rushed past it. I slid to a stop and slashed at the beowolf, but the beowolf was too far away for me to reach and I missed the slash. I recovered and threw some aura arrows at the beowolves. Three hit the wounded beowolf and it collapsed, and four hit the other one. Although they landed with a thump into it's side and it let out a yelp of pain I didn't hit a vital spot, and I'm sure they must've hurt. In the fight with the two beowolves I had forgotten about the alpha. I was glancing to see it's position, but it was already nearly in front of me. It crashed into me and mauled me with it's claws and bit into my shoulder. I screamed in pain and was about to stab it with the shortsword, but it hopped backwards before I could hit anything. I glanced at my health and saw it was at about 320. That mauling had costed me almost 160 HP even with my aura reinforcement! It didn't even hit a vital spot! I realized I should've picked up that armor I wanted and silently vowed to do that immediately after I finished off the alpha and it's pack.

The alpha growled at me and I scowled at it. My body worked fine thanks to gamer's body, but it still hurt like hell. I shifted my weapon back into a spear and prepared to charge again. The alpha pounced at me and I leapt to my right. Stance worked more of it's wonders and I shadow charged into it with a thrust to where the heart was. I hit the beowolf a little off the heart but I fired the shotgun and the Beowolf roared in pain. I fired again and my spear came loose. I realized I had lost track of where the other beowolf was and I leapt back and looked around. I saw it running towards me and I launched an aura blast at it. It stopped it, but it didn't much push it back. I jabbed with my spear and poked it's eye and a little into it's brain. This seemed to be the nail in the coffin and the beowolf promptly collapsed. The alpha was doing another standoff with me, and I thought "You know what? Screw this." I then launched maybe twenty aura arrows at that damn alpha and it couldn't do much about it. It hunkered down and took the hit even as I was shooting an aura bolt. The bolt shattered It's mask and made a mess of it's brain.

That fight had been tiring for me to pull off. Not to mention that I had blood all over my clothes due to the mauling. I took a look at the flurry of message boxes that had appeared during the fight.

 **Battle won!**

 **Enemies: 3x young beowolf, 2x adult beowolf, 1x alpha beowolf**

 **Loot: 898 lien, 3x beowolf teeth, 2x grimm blood, Skill book: Summon darkness elemental, 1475 XP**

 **Level up! Level up!**

 **Aura bolt leveled up! Aura bolt leveled up! Aura bolt leveled up! Aura bolt leveled up! Aura arrow leveled up! Shadow rush leveled up! Shadow rush leveled up! Shadow rush leveled up! Aura reinforcement leveled up! Aura reinforcement leveled up!**

 **New skills acquired!**

 **Swordsmanship proficiency**

 **-Passive-**

 **Your general aptitude in swords. These include broadswords, shortswords, and the like. This also applies to mechashift swords. The bonuses applied by this skill stack with the bonuses provided by other fighting styles.**

 **+10%STR, VIT, and DEX when wielding a sword in combat.**

 **Usable moves: Stab, slash, heavy slash, parry, and block**

 **Due to being mauled for heavy damage your VIT increased by 2**

 **Due to using your environment in combat your INT increased by 1**

 **Due to consistently straining your arms your STR increase by 1**

Well, that fight was painful and went very wrong very fast, but damn! Those were some good rewards. Especially that skill book! Imagine what I could do with an elemental; and a darkness one at that. It would help me stay hidden in the shadows. I don't know if I'll be able to make the shadows solid, but even if I can't it'll be a sweet deal. To know I needed to absorb the skill book. So I did.

 **New skill acquired!**

 **Summon elemental: Darkness**

 **-Active cost: 40 AP/sec-**

 **Summon an elemental as a companion and ally to manipulate the elements in your favor. First you must do the contracting ritual, and then the elemental may be summoned at will. The powers of the elemental are a sum of your INT, WIS, and affinity with the summoned elemental's element.**

That was surprisingly uninformative, but oh well. I'd do the ritual later, after I get the armor I vowed to get. I was thinking about using studded leather armor with a coat over it. As the web series had shown me though, everything looked stylish and a bit flashy. So why not take a page from assassin's creed and have a stylish white overcoat? No hood, though. I didn't need one at the moment, and I doubted I would in the future. I can just wear a mask or a hat.

The clothing and armors store worked about as well as one can imagine. People freaked out a little at my bloodstained clothes, but I lied about an accident in a butcher shop. It didn't explain the clear-as-day claw marks, but I let them come to their own conclusions on that. I got a point in my charisma for it. Everyone at the store, after they calmed down, insisted I get new clothes, to which I agreed. I picked out some ones similar to my old ones, and some new ones that I liked, and put them in my inventory after paying. My old ones were thrown out. Then I got to the armor. Getting the studded leather was easy enough. They had one in stock that was roughly my size. I asked that the shoulder pads, the leather straps, and some other parts of the armor be dyed the same color of my spear. While the staff was doing that I picked out a coat my size and had a revelation. I asked if they were able to sow armor plates into the thicker portion of the coat, and they smiled and said it could but it would take a day or so. He also mentioned that some other people did that as well. General Ironwood for example. I paid the price for them to do that and went to adjust my leather armor to fit me right. That process took way longer than it should have. The spear at the weapons shop had only taken a half an hour at most. The armor took two. I checked their clock. I sneaked the armor into my inventory and left the shop.

 **Quest completed!**

 **Gearing up**

 **Basic clothes aren't good armor. That spear could be better too. And pretty much everything else about you. Vale wasn't destroyed in a day, though so the "everything else" will have to wait.**

 **Objectives**

 **-Acquire a spear of your own (Completed)**

 **-Acquire armor of your own (Completed)**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Get a gun of some sort (Completed)**

 **Time limit: 33 hours**

 **Rewards: 1000 XP, 1000 lien**

 **Bonus reward: 250x 16-gage rounds**

 **Level up!**

 **Quest completed!**

 **Beefing up**

 **You're pretty weak as of now. Tomorrow you'll need some skills to help out at all. Get to level 10. (Hint: Use the ID's)**

 **Objectives**

 **-Reach level 10 (Completed)**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Acquire new skills (3/3) (Completed)**

 **Time limit: 33 hours**

 **Rewards: 1000 XP**

 **Start the story!**

 **Now that you've arrived in Vale and got strong enough you can start the plot. Meet with Ruby in Dust till dawn and impress Ozpin enough to become a Beacon student.**

 **Objectives**

 **-Go to Dust till dawn at 9pm tomorrow**

 **-Make contact with Ruby Rose**

 **-Prove your worth in the robbery**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Impress Glynda Goodwitch**

 **-Become friends with Ruby**

 **-Don't use your secret aura techniques**

 **-Make a bad pun**

 **Rewards: Lodging, a Beacon scholarship, 5000 XP, 3000 lien**

Make a bad pun? I can probably do that. I don't know how right now, but I'll call them as I see them. I can definitely become friends with Ruby. I'll just be interested in weapons when I meet her, which I don't even need to lie about. She's so adorable in the show that it's hard to not be friends with her. Even Weiss fell to her charm. I've been planning to avoid using my special techniques anyways, so I can pull that off. I have no idea how I'll impress Glynda Goodwitch. Maybe just be polite and courteous? I don't know. All in all, though, this seems like something I can do.

In an empty ID, which was just like Vale but without people, I was drawing a runic circle on a rooftop. It was basically a fancy circle made of lots of less fancy lines with a sort of abstract art in the middle. I knew from the skill book that the so-called abstract art was really a representation of shadow, but to me it just looked like someone spilled paint in a fancy circle. When I finished I started the summoning phrase the book showed me. "There is no light without the dark. Come, Tartaros." The black splotch in the middle of the circle seemed to shiver in a way. The blackness compressed itself into a more inky blackness that seemed to swirl inside itself. It formed into a humanoid figure of a sort on the stone, like a man with his arms at his sides. Then a gap opened at what was similar to a face. A gap made out of something that shined, but didn't seem bright. It was like when a beam of light hits a gem was the best way to describe it. "I am Grady. I have given you my true name. What is yours?" "I…am…-" I was shown a vision of an infinite darkness; an ocean of it without light. It was not cold, but it felt at body temperature, like there was no air at all. I realized I didn't have to breathe. There was something else in the darkness. No, not one thing. Many things moved in the darkness. No, not even that. The thing moving WAS the darkness; a mass of nothingness continuously hugging itself into a dense mass of void. It was a confusing concept to say the least. I blinked and the vision was over. I looked at the elemental "I am Grady." I said. "I am Tartaros." It said. "May we be forever one." we said together. As we said the last part I moved my hand forward palm first. The mass of shadows where I was going to touch grew denser as I moved my hand. As my hand touched Tartaros' pseudo hand my vision faded to black.


	3. Chapter 3 - Starting the plot

**EDIT: The paragraphs were apparently way too long, and I have to agree. So I'm going to try to fix this a little bit.**

 **AN: Let's just skip straight to the point. Here's the stuff you might be interested in. Firstly, there will be no romance with our protagonist, but I might put in some awkward Arkos shipping because I can. No other ships, though. Secondly, I know our protagonist seems a little overpowered right now, but trust me. He's not. For reference, killing a lone Alpha beowolf is a challenge right now. It takes planning and luck for Grady, while pro huntsmen can practically one-shot them. Ironwood did in volume 3. Also, you'll see why the growth is so rapid in this chapter. Thirdly, I'll be skipping some of the boring filler scenes in this story, such as getting the new armor in that store. I'll just skim over that stuff for the juicy bits. Seriously, who reads a scene about shopping? (And then millions of girls felt an urge to slap a high school student.) Fourthly, I keep messing with the statistics for getting AP, which stands for aura points btw, HP, and their regeneration rates, so that might annoy some people, but please deal with it. I'll try to not change it again. Finally, I should tell you all now that I don't have a story chart or a rough draft of my stories or anything like that. I just write this stuff for fun. Somehow, though, there's about 90 follows on this. How the hell did that happen? I hadn't expected to get more than twenty of so for the whole story, and I considered that an optimistic estimate. Maybe people like these gamer fics more than I thought… Well, whatever. Have fun with the new chapter!**

Level 3

"Ughhhhhhhhhh…..UGHHHHHHHHHH…..Uh?...mmmmm, sleeeeeeeep…." Was what I moaned after waking up on the roof of a building. I rolled onto my back and groaned at the sunlight on my eyes. I mustered up enough strength to flop my hand to my face, and rubbed my eyes a little. Then I opened them. "Why am I outside?" I asked nobody in particular. I thought for a moment and remembered that I was now in an alien world with no friends, family, money, or, well, anything. But now it's time to fix that! Let's go make a friend! A desperate and eccentric friend! Ruby, to be exact. She was my favorite character in the show back home. She's just so adorable! The fact that she's a badass with her scythe just makes her an even better character. Jaune had been my second favorite, because everybody loves Jaune, even if he is a bit of a dumbass at times.

Now that I had woken up a bit it was time to start my day. I stretched, yawned, and stood up. Since time passed at the same speed in the ID's I knew that it'd be the same light level in the real world. Thus, I still had time to kill before I had to do anything. Thinking for a minute on what to do, I made a plan. Those skill points I was earning were all well and good, but I wasn't DOING anything with them. They just sat there. However, the higher my stats were, the higher my points were worth. And since the sooner I'm willing to use my points, the sooner I'm strong, I needed physical training. Luckily, there was a whole bunch of junk around vale I could bench-press and such. So let's do that.

 **Planning a rough training regimen increased your WIS by 1**

Yay! I'm already getting started! Firstly, I should get more life insurance; VIT to be specific. The more I can tire my opponent out, the more I could not be hit. And when I am hit, I can shrug it off. Secondly, I need to get rid of my chicken arms. Sure, that's gone with my aura, but being average doesn't cut it in a hunter society. I need to get some muscle on me. And finally, I need DEX. I need to move fast enough to dodge attacks while keeping my pokey end between my opponent and myself. That's been my whole fighting strategy thus far, and it's worked great! However, I'm sure there are times I won't have my spear, or when I have an enemy that it just doesn't work against. Ruby, for example, could just snipe at me while she runs away. Yang could kick the crap out of me inside my guard, and Nora would Nora her way around the problem with explosive violence and scary strength.

After popping back to Remnant for a moment, where I learned it was about 9:30, I decided I'd train by punching a rough concrete wall until my HP runs low, sprint around the city for a bit while doing backflips and vaults, and all the while using aura reinforcement, summon darkness elemental, and using shadow rush and ranged aura skills. So I closed my eyes and summoned Tartaros with a quick thought. I opened them and he appeared again as a faint shadow on the sunny roof. I looked at him, expecting him to say something for out first summoning. An awkward moment passed where nothing happened and I sighed. "I just need you to hang around so the skill levels up, so go and…um… Look for a store called Dust till dawn for me, would you?" Tartaros made a sort of weird nodding motion and glided off the roof. Huh. Maybe he can't talk unless it's telepathically. " _HEY, TARTAROS_!" I thought as loud as I could " _What_?" I heard him ask with just a little annoyance in his tone "Sorry, I'm just checking to see if you can hear my thoughts." I waited to see if Tartaros would respond, and when he didn't I supposed that he just doesn't like to talk.

I shadow rushed down the side of the building (Damn I'm cool!) and punched the wall as hard as I could. I made an extremely manly whimper and waited for gamer's mind to dull the pain, which it did, and did it again. And again. And again.

 **About 11 hours later…**

That was horrible! I'd take a week of school over bloodying my knuckles on solid concrete over and over again. After I started on the punching exercise a second time I quit trying to raise my VIT by hurting myself, and instead just using endurance to train it up. The other bit of my time was spent clumsily parkouring my way around the city, and I'm LOVING the results. My stats rose quite a lot, and MUCH more than I thought they would.

 **(AN: The } mark shows first the old base stat, then the new one. 5 } 6 would mean that the old stat was 5, but became 6.)**

 **Grady Andrews**

 **Title: The Gamer**

 **Level – 10**

 **HP – I keep changing the formula } 512 (+10.3/min)**

 **AP – I keep changing the formula } 1036 (+180/min)**

 **STR -9 } 15 (+30%)=19.5**

 **VIT -12 } 24 (+30%)=31.2**

 **DEX -11 } 17 (+30%)=22.1**

 **INT -18 (+30%)=23.4**

 **WIS -20 (+30%) =26**

 **LUK -9**

 **CHR -10**

 **POINTS - 45**

 **LIEN – 0**

 **Affinities:**

 **Darkness: 20**

 **Light: 10**

 **Soul: 50**

 **Run – lv.3 } 9**

 **-Cost: 5 AP/min; Active/passive skill-**

 **It's as said, which is running. You run. That's it. This does not affect your speed when trying to walk fast or crawl or anything like that.**

 **+13% speed when running passively**

 **+44% speed when actively running**

 **Aura reinforcement – lv.3 } 6**

 **-Active (20AP/min)/Passive-**

 **A basic skill any aura user should have. Shroud yourself in your aura to nullify injuries and heal faster.**

 **Passively increases HP regeneration by 30%**

 **Increases STR, VIT, and DEX by 30% when active**

 **Reduces damage taken by 40% when active**

 **Summon elemental: Darkness – lv. 8**

 **-Active cost: 36 AP/sec-**

 **Summon an elemental as a companion and ally to manipulate the elements in your favor. First you must do the contracting ritual, and then the elemental may be summoned at will. The powers of the elemental are a sum of your INT, WIS, and affinity with the summoned elemental's element.**

Wait, what? Affinities? Oh, right. If I remember then they give your summoned elemental more power. I always was fascinated with light before all the gamer stuff. How it bends, how it works on a molecular level, how close I could get a reflected beam to a friend or teachers eye, etc. So I suppose that since I was most affiliated with light I gained experience and thus affinity for it. Darkness was obvious, now that I gained a darkness elemental, and Soul… now that was interesting. I've had plenty of things different from canon the gamer manga, but those were all small things. I didn't get a physical resistance skill, I'm in remnant, my ability wasn't innate, being a so-called diving gift, and lots of other things. However, this was way off of everything I knew about the ability. Humans had a soul with them they're entire lives, yet now I somehow have a magical affinity for it. This is exciting! It's new territory! Maybe I can manipulate the auras of others! But for now that's all theory. I can put that stuff to the test later. Tartaros had found dust till dawn a long time ago, and it was time to meet Ruby!

Dust till dawn looked about as expected. It was like a jewelry store, but with less fake smiles and more of a gloomy England sort of look. It was kind of cozy in a way. I peeked down the aisles and didn't see Ruby, so I walked to the back and pulled out a magazine at random. It was on making custom dust rounds, and I thought it was really interesting. The properties of dust were some really amazing things. At the molecular level dust seemed to be made of particles unlike basic atoms, and are arranged in a way that allows the clusters to produce energy of a form. Fire dust was a bit like a furnace that burns flammable compounds native to remnant's atmosphere, and is really volatile. The other types were interesting too, but only a few were really understood. The complex ones were practically beyond human comprehension, like gravity dust, or the near-legendary time dust. The one I found most interesting, however, was electrical dust, which was, get this, akin to a small cold fusion plant on the molecular level. Seriously! Remnant had cold fusion plants running on molecular sized cold fusion chambers. Granted, it wasn't quite cold fusion, and high-grade electric dust was the rarest dust-type that was still available to the licensed public. Of COURSE they aren't handing out that nuclear dust to any street thug. Speaking of nuclear dust (which was just high grade uranium. These guys can't tell dust from rocks, HA!.) that stuff was just locked in a vault whenever the remnant govorment finds any. It's been deemed too dangerous to handle on account of there being no knowledge of radiation on remnant. Anyways, I, uhm…lost myself in the magazine. I didn't even notice Ruby come in or stand right next to me, even with her loud music. "Hey! You two! Put your hands where I can see them." I heard someone say behind me. I turned around, glimpsing Ruby's red cloak while doing so, and saw an average looking guy pointing a big cleaver at me. Curious, I threw an observe at the guy and was saddened by what I saw.

 **Anonymous gangster**

 **Title:**

 **Level 8**

 **HP: 200**

 **AP: 300**

 **Description: Just your everyday gangster. He's not serious about his job, and isn't good for much other than bouncing and looking threatening.**

Seriously? I was expecting the start of canon to be somewhat interesting. This is gong to be barely a challenge. I looked at Ruby and saw that she had no idea what was going on. She had her head I a magazine much like I had, and had headphones on too, which were blaring music. I tapped her shoulder to get her attention. She glanced at me and took her headphones off. "I'm pretty sure this guy is trying to rob us." I said with an amused expression on my face. "Are you?" She asked the gangster. Was she seriously asking a gangster with a knife pointed at her if he was robbing us? That was something I expected myself to do, not Ruby. And lo and behold, the gangster replied "yes." I thought on that a moment and grinned. We were both pretty similar, now that I think about it. We were both weird people who were shy around others, and we both were just happy to have friends around us rather than money or power or anything like that. But rather than reflect, it was time to kick ass.

Before waiting for a snappy comment I ran at the gangster and knocked aside his weapon while dropkicking him. It was hilarious! The guy seemed so surprised that he didn't block or anything. He went flying out the window with a nice crash. I got up and looked to my right to see Roman staring at me. He looked pretty stylish. I felt a little jealous and wanted to get my overcoat soon just to try to show him up. The mascara looked surprisingly good too, I had to admit. The white coat, black pants, and bowler hat I had never bothered with coat terminology so I didn't know what it was called. "Did you just dropkick that guy?" he asked incredulously. "Yes. Yes I did." "Go try and kick his ass, you guys." And at that I stepped out the window and out into the street. I saw Ruby follow me in a gust of rose petals, trying to hold in a giggle. The four other hired goons ran out the door with their cleavers drawn, and roman following after. I made a show of drawing my spear from my back, when I was really just taking it from my inventory, while Ruby extended her scythe and laid the tip on the ground. I took a glance at her while she was doing so and wasn't disappointed in what I saw.

 **Ruby Rose**

 **Title: Red Reaper**

 **Level 22**

 **HP: 800**

 **AP: 1600**

 **Description: A normally happy and innocent girl who lives with her sister Yang, her uncle Qrow, and her father Tai. She currently attends Signal academy and kicks ass with a big gardening tool.**

Why is the gamer ability such a dick?! It's amusing and annoying at the same time! Anyways, I don't know why people like Ruby and myself have so much aura in comparison to others. Maybe it's training and stats, or maybe we're both naturally strong people. I don't know, but it's nice. " I didn't know you were a hunter in training too!" She asked me. "I'm not." I said. "Huh?" "Hey, kids! Over here!" "Oh, right. Let's focus on the bad guys right now." And at that I charged towards the gangsters once more with aura reinforcement on. Before I made contact I dodged to my left, causing the gangster to swing at air, and I put a hard stab into his side, getting rid of most of the gangster's aura and probably cracking a rib. Damn, I felt strong now. I could hear some loud booms coming from my front right, which was probably ruby shooting her scythe. However, I couldn't afford to focus on her in the middle of a fight. I kicked the gangster away where he knelt on the ground, and I turned to see the other one turning to swing at me. From what I could tell these guys had no training whatsoever. Who thought that throwing them out to a robbery was a good idea? Then I realized that the goons weren't as helpless as they seemed as the guy I was currently looking towards had a submachine gun.

Panicking just a little bit my brain kicked into the next gear to think of options. I could throw or shoot my spear, but I haven't trained in throwing, wasn't close enough to shoot, and didn't want to be weaponless if I got in close to Roman. I could use shadow rush, but I didn't know how well Ruby had dealt with those other goons, or if Glynda or Roman or someone would look into it. I could feasibly tank it with aura reinforcement, as well as the leather armor I had over my clothes (I was going to get that white overcoat tomorrow for sure.) but it could hurt quite a bit depending on the goon's aim and clip size. Wait, aim… I summoned Tartaros with a whisper of his name in my mind and he instantly saw what I wanted. He thickened the shadows around the red glasses of the goon, effectively blinding him, as the goon yelled in surprise. He knew better than to shoot wildly, as even idiots had some common sense it seemed. So I rushed him and stabbed him without much drama after that. Roman looked at me with an analyzing expression and a scowl, which then switched to Ruby as he did the same. "Well, kids, as much as I'd-" Roman didn't get to finish as I snatched the gangster's SMG and unloaded at Roman. His eyes widened just a bit as he dove out of my line of fire. "Hey! Stop that!" He yelled. I just grinned and shot at him some more. Roman muttered something and grabbed a yellow light crystal out of his pocket. What did yellow stand for, again? "Don't look!" I heard Ruby yell. She was too late, though, and a light blinded me. Oh, right. Yellow was for light.

I blinked as my vision returned to me and saw Roman at the top of a ladder. I cursed and ran after him. I channeled aura into my legs and released it in a jump. I got a notification but brushed it aside for later. Ruby was already at the top saying "Hey!" to Roman, and I walked up beside her. I was pretty sure I'd proved I was good enough for beacon, but I sure wasn't going to let Roman get away without at least trying to stop him. "Meddling kids" Roman muttered. Just then a bullhead rose from in front of him. Man! That guy was a master of looking cool! It was like I was in a movie! Then he got into the bullhead and pulled out a red crystal. I grabbed Ruby's shoulder and hopped back from the blast of the red dust crystal while blocking my eyes just in case. I was pushed back a little, but not much, as I saw Glynda Goodwitch in my peripheral vision throw some purple things I smugly named magic missiles, as well as ice, a storm, and a spear made of concrete in an epic duel with a woman shrouded in shadows. I considered unveiling a few of my powers and helping Glynda, but I doubted that would change anything. I knew this was Cinder, but nobody else did. I realized there was nothing I could do and took a step back. Ruby, however, shot at the bullhead with her sniper rifle. This did nothing but attract cinder's attention. This attack happened too fast for me to react to, and I could only stare at the circle of fire that would explode under our feet. Luckily, with a sweep of her riding crop Glynda threw Ruby and I out of the way of the pillars of fire. While she was doing so Roman and Cinder flew away. "You're a huntress…" Ruby breathed. "Can I have your autograph?!"

Just about ten minutes later Ruby and I were in prison. Well, not really in prison. Just a holding cell. Glynda dropped us in here and left to find Ozpin. "So, what's your name?" Ruby asked. "Mine's Grady. And you?" "I'm Ruby. Ruby Rose. I'm a student at Signal. Where'd you learn to fight like that? There aren't many hunters in training that use spears, and even less that teach others." "Oh, I learned from my father. He always preferred to do things his own way, and I figured if I wanted to be a hunter I'd need to learn from someone. And you? I can't imagine many people know how to use a weapon like yours. What is it, anyways?" Yes! Keep the spotlight off myself. I'm pulling this backstory from nowhere.

"I learned from my uncle Qrow. He's my uncle and an instructor at signal. He taught me everything I know about my fighting style, and the weapon is a sniper scythe. I call mine Crescent Rose. I made it myself." " Yourself? Is that normal for hunter academy students?" I was genuinely curious here. This hadn't been in the show. "No. Everyone else just turns in a blueprint to the local weapon smith. As far as I know I'm the only one as signal who did it by themselves." "Do you think you could help me out with my spear, then? I've got some ideas on trying to improve it, but I don't know how to pull it off. I could just do it with a smith, but I don't have the money or time for that." Ruby's eyes lit up at that. "Yeah! I took a look at it and it shifts into a sword, right? I took a look at it while we were walking, and after working on Crescent Rose for so long I can't help but think of ways to improve weapons. I'm kind of a weapons geek if you can't tell." I smiled at her. "That'd be great! I'm working on making my own ammo right now, so I don't mind making some for you in the first batch I make. We can talk more when we're not in a holding cell, though. I think Ozpin is about to come in."

And at that Ozpin strolled in with cookies and his coffee. "Ruby Rose. You…Have silver eyes." Ruby didn't really know how to respond to that. "Uh-um." "So. Where did you learn to do this?" Ozpin continued, handing Ruby a scroll with a video of the fight playing. "S-Signal Academy." "They taught you to use one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed?" "Well, mostly my uncle Qrow, an instructor." "I see…" Ozpin set the plate down in-between Ruby and I and I snagged one for myself before Ruby tore into the plate. The poor cookies didn't stand a chance. "And you." Ozpin said, looking at me. "I've looked in the records, but I found no mention of anyone like you. And the huntsmen who use a spear are few and far in-between. Who are you?" Aaaand it's time to bullshit my way through again. "My name is Grady Andrews. I'm from a village outside Vale. We weren't big enough to warrant recording each birth, so you won't find any records there, and the village…isn't around anymore." I made sure to weaken my smile at the end there. It seems everyone else's expression seemed a little sadder too. "As far as I know there are only a few others from there who are still around, and none of them are in Vale."

"That explains it then. It's a tragedy that events like yours still occur. My condolences. And your fighting skills?" "I learned from my father. I wasn't interested in being a hunter before. I only wanted to be able to help when something happened." "Before?" Ozpin inquired. "Well, I'm thinking of trying to enter Beacon Academy next year, when I'm old enough to enter. I don't have anywhere else to go for now, so I'm currently living in apartment and doing odd jobs while training daily. You could say beacon is a 'Beacon' of hope for me." Everyone worked to ignore that last part, while Ozpin nodded. "Maybe I can help you with that. Miss Rose, you also wish to be a hunter, yes?" Ruby nodded "What if I inducted you two early? Your skills, Mr. Andrews, are a little underwhelming for Beacon, but you are certainly strong enough to enter. Not every student at Beacon is able to kick a man out of a window. Ruby would have no trouble getting in normally, so I see no problem in her entering early. Sadly, there is only one free slot so you, Mr. Andrews, would be what we call an honorary student. You would operate independently on missions that would be easy for teams, yet still challenging for an independent hunter in training. You would also assist teams you are familiar with for more challenging missions."

I thought for a moment on the offer. It was about as expected. I hadn't expected to be a throw in on team RWBY or anything. The independent student deal made sense to join, but something was bugging me. I was growing powerful fast, but how would that look in beacon? I would be strong, sure, but would I be useful? If I looked to take out the white fang from outside, and got stronger that way, wouldn't it be better? I'd get stronger quicker and would be able to use my abilities without hiding them from the teams and Ozpin. But if I joined I'd be hiding my more magical abilities, as well as blocking myself off from any work on the enemies of beacon unless I skipped classes. So maybe there's a better way to do this? " Well, Ozpin, joining beacon sounds good at first, but I still have things I need to do. Things I can't do if I spend all my time in a classroom. However, I would like to learn from beacon. Would it be possible to only take some classes, rather than all?" Ozpin frowned. "No, we do not offer partial studentship to our students." He had a thoughtful expression for a moment. "However, there is another option. Years ago, before hunter academies were as prominent as they are now, hunters were made by learning from a senior huntsman as an apprentice. The system is hardly functional now, yet it still exists. If you were to… Apprentice to a teacher at beacon, you would be expected to follow their instruction in your training. Would this be acceptable to you?" I had a wide smile on my face at the word apprentice. One – on – one training? YES PLEASE! "I accept." I said. "Good. Now, I'll introduce -" "Oh, there's no need for that" I interrupted. "I know which teacher I'd like to apprentice to." At that Ozpin looked genuinely curious, as well as a bit annoyed that I interrupted him. "Truly? And that would be?" "Glynda Goodwitch."

At that Ozpin's eyes widened and his grip tightened on his mug. Glynda had surprise evident on her face with her mouth opening the slightest amount. The two of them schooled their expressions within a fraction of a second, though. I glanced to Ruby and saw her hand with a cookie halfway to her mouth, stopped midair. "Grady, why would I take you as my apprentice? It is to my knowledge that our fighting styles don't at all work together, nor do I have anything else of value to teach you that you could not learn anywhere else." Glynda said, her voice a bit tenser than usual. "On the contrary, Miss Goodwitch," I said. I stood up from the table and stood behind my chair. Ozpin watched me with interest, while Glynda narrowed her eyes a small amount. "I can learn quite a bit from you." And at that I let a slew of aura arrows on the wall to my right. _Thunk- Thunk -Thunk -Thunk -Thunk –Thunk._ If Glynda hadn't been surprised before she certainly was now. Ozpin seemed to have kept his expression concealed somehow, while Ruby dropped the cookie remains from her hand onto the plate. "While I publicly use the spear, I primarily trained in utilizing aura as a weapon. It isn't a semblance, and I have plenty of ways to try to improve it. I have roughly three techniques as of now, and I feel I could learn much more from what you use in your style." Glynda schooled her expression once more and said "Ozpin, I believe I have a new student."

 **AN: YES! I CAN STILL BE A MAGE! Now, I just want to clarify for anyone curious that I'm still going to use a spear, but the style, like any video game style, will be changing rapidly. I'm going to be more like a spellsword, if you will. Except I'll be throwing spells up close and personal. I'll get a paragraph on this next chapter. Also, I've read quite a lot of fanfictions on RWBY, but Glynda, as well as a few other characters that could be important, like Coco or Velvet, are just sort of absent except for they're background purposes, and I've only seen one fanfiction with Glynda teaching a new student. So halfway while writing the honorary student thing I was thinking "Isn't this just what everybody else does? What's the point if this fic isn't unique to me?" and I have to say, for making this up as I go along this worked out beautifully.**


	4. Chapter 4 - Tutorial ends

**AN: Okay, I got it. Fix your paragraphs. I got everyone's message loud and clear. I looked back on it and I understand that it's a brick wall of text. I crunched it down a bit, trying to make it easier to read, but it's not great. This chapter should be better in that I'll be trying out line breaks. However, I'm going to soldier on and keep on writing, whether it is garbage or gold. I feel I should explain, though, why my paragraphs resemble a brick to the face, however.**

 **I'm used to writing essays so I wrote in the manner appropriate for an essay and got annihilated for it. Oh well, you win some - you lose some. I have to say that I think I'm still winning in my mind.** _ **Whispers: I didn't feel like much of a winner last chapter, though.**_ **Anyways, I read through some of the more popular stories on , and I noticed something. All the paragraphs are only like two sentences for a moderately sized one. You know that in school they expect 6 to 15 sentences per paragraph? Yeah. Well, I'll have to do something I never enjoyed. EDIT! *** _ **Thunder crashes ***_ **Yeah, I really don't like editing. I'll try and tolerate it, though. Please send me your feedback on the chapters so I can be a better writer! But please be gentle because I'm a delicate little pansy man.**

Level 4

Hold on, Grady! You just ruined some of your optional objectives for getting into Beacon! You were supposed to HIDE your auric techniques! Not show them to the staff!

That's what I was thinking too. However, when I saw Glynda throw magic missiles at Cinder like they were candy on Halloween I couldn't help myself. Those amazing aura techniques had to be mine. In the end of it all I was going to request private tutoring from Glynda, anyways, so the whole apprenticeship deal was a thing of beauty. Also, if I tried to hide my powers and they get revealed, how would that look? If I reveal them now then it might make me seem to have laid my cards on the table, rather than seem unexceptional and near useless.

So screw it. I could hide my powers, or I could perfect them. I had this gift of understanding and controlling my aura, and I was going to snatch some training in the night and throw it to battle? How would I even use them without being detected?! WHAT WAS I SMOKING EARLIER TO MAKE MYSELF DEFY LOGIC?!

These were the thoughts that raced through my brain after I accepted Ozpin's offer of apprenticeship to Beacon. I only vaguely heard Ruby squeal "Yes!" in the room.

Ruby's excitement was pretty understandable. Going to Beacon was going to be pretty awesome, I could tell. However, knowing that I was going to go after the White fang this early on is scary. Maybe I could train at night first, and start hitting the organization where it hurts after I get more power. After all, I'd been in trouble with just one goon of Junior's, and those goons are incompetent for just about everything.

All this plotting could wait until later. Right now I wanted to get to know Ruby better. So for right now…

" So would that be all for right now?" I asked Ozpin. He looked at me, saying, "Yes, for now. We have to get the paperwork for your and Miss Rose done tomorrow. For now, though, get some rest. School will start Monday." Um, I don't even know what day it is. "What day is it today, sir? In all the excitement and summer vacation I forgot." " Oh, it would be Thursday today." "Thank you."

Well, that was easy enough. If it's Thursday at, say, ten P.M. then I've got about three days of training to use to get myself to a decent level. Since Ruby was level 22, then I may want to be about twenty. I have plenty of time.

"I'll see you on Monday, Mister Andrews" said Glynda sternly as she and Ozpin left. Wait! I thought as my eyes widened. I forgot to observe them! The two were barely in view as I observed the two before they left. I took a quick glance at the data shown before I had to dismiss it.

 **Ozpin Kippings**

 **Title: The chessmaster**

 **Level ?**

 **HP: ?**

 **AP: ?**

 **Description: The headmaster of Beacon academy of Vale. He isn't in his position due to his strength, but rather his cunning and foresight. Of course, his strength is nothing to be laughed at. In fact, of the few who learn of his strength most of them ran away. Any more data is redacted by order of the gamemaster.**

 **Glynda Goodwitch**

 **Title: The witch of Beacon**

 **Level: ?**

 **HP: ?**

 **AP: ?**

 **Description: The assistant to the headmaster of beacon, Ozpin, and a teacher at Beacon Academy. She is famous both for her strength and refusal for taking students in the auric arts despite being considered a master of the craft. Her reason for the lack of students being that the potential pupils didn't seem interesting enough or skilled enough to suit her standards. Until now…**

I just sat there for a moment, processing that Glynda hadn't taken a student before, and I'd blown all that away with just one meeting. " _What the hell did I just do_?" I thought. Becoming Glynda's student would bring in a lot of attention to me. Attention I don't want since my absent background might come into question. I've already done the deed, though, so I'll just keep rolling with the punches. Also, Kippings? I suppose even someone with a title of the chessmaster was born normal.

Oh, right. Ruby is still sitting next to me. " So what time do you want to meet up? If you still want to, of course." Ruby just stared at the table for a second, and a few seconds after I asked her she seemed to come back to remnant with an eloquent "Eh, huh?" I smiled and asked again "What time do you want to meet up? We were talking about my spear before Ozpin came in, and I was thinking we could meet up later to try out some custom ammunition and tinker with our weapons." Some part of her seemed to wake up then, and her eyes seemed more focused.

"Oh! Yeah, we can meet up at, ahhhh, how about tomorrow at noon at my house. My uncle has a workshop in the back yard." I found it odd that Ruby could invite a guy to her house and not realize it, but whatever. "Sure. I'll bring the custom ammo supplies. I'll see you tomorrow."

At that I walked out of the room and left Ruby to her daze. Nobody seemed to notice me as I picked up my weapon and left. Man, no wonder the police weren't able to stop Roman Torchwick. They can't even stop a teenager from waling out of their station. Or maybe it's normal to see armed teenagers walk around police stations. That would explain a lot, actually.

My night wasn't quite over yet. I don't need to sleep, so that wasn't an issue, but I do need to train. I'm feeling confident that I could train in the Grimm ID tonight, though. I could also travel to patch while I'm at it, since Ruby's home was there.

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Start the story!**

 **Now that you've arrived in Vale and got strong enough you can start the plot. Meet with Ruby in Dust till dawn and impress Ozpin enough to become a Beacon student.**

 **Objectives**

 **-Go to Dust till dawn at 9pm tomorrow (Completed)**

 **-Make contact with Ruby Rose (Completed)**

 **-Prove your worth in the robbery (Completed)**

 **Optional objectives**

 **-Impress Glynda Goodwitch (Completed, and more)**

 **-Become friends with Ruby (Completed)**

 **-Don't use your secret aura techniques (Failed…Badly)**

 **-Make a bad pun**

 **Rewards: Lodging,** **a Beacon scholarship** **(Negated by personal actions), Apprenticeship to Glynda, 5000 XP, 3000 lien, friendship with Ruby Rose, multiple auric based skill books, 3 INT and WIS**

 **NOTIFICATION!**

 **THE TUTORIAL HAS NOW ENDED. ANY XP GAINS OUTSIDE OF COMBAT ARE NOW HALVED. MONSTERS HAVE NOW BECOME MORE DANGEROUS, BOSSES HAVE APPEARED, DUNGEONS ARE AVAILABLE, THE SKILL TREE HAS UNLOCKED, YOUR SEMBLANCE HAS BECOME AVAILABLE, AND SOME ENTITIES ARE NOW AWARE OF YOUR PRESENCE.**

 **Level up!**

Huh? Negated by personal actions? That makes sense, I suppose. It's become pretty clear that the gamer skill isn't omniscient, even if it does seem to show signs of precognition at times.

 **Due to understanding your ability your INT and wisdom have risen by 5**

Oh, yes! I just got eight intellect and wisdom?! I suppose that's how I know I'm spot on with the gamer thing, and the other six points are probably from being apprenticed to Glynda, as well as the books. Huh? What's that other message?

Wait… WAIT, WHAT?! Tutorial?! I almost died like four times! Well, I suppose I was growing really fast compared to the original gamer guy, what's his name? Eh, who cares? This is much more important. Dungeons are simple to understand. I'd guess they're zones with monsters, loot, and a boss. Bosses will most likely appear as they did in the gamer manga, which is after I kill enough enemies, which are Grimm, in my case. The other things, though, seem incredibly important. A skill tree is completely foreign to me, other than what the name tells me. My semblance is like a Christmas present. I have no idea what it's going to be. The entities bit is of the most concern. Who knows who, or what, could come after me.

I walked down to sit on a nearby bench. Right now I'll check those books I got, which seem to be condensed into two books, and then the skills tree, since absorbing books is easier than understanding a new foreign branch of my ability. So I observed them.

 **Skill book – Basic auric techniques by Monty Oum**

 **Aura channeling**

 **-Cost: 25 AP/min; Toggle skill-**

 **Aura naturally increases a person's physical capabilities, but when consciously circulated around the body or condensed into one limb then it acts much more efficiently, and as a result, makes your body/limb stronger. This is what is used for aura powered leaps, as well as sprints powered by aura.**

 **+50% physical stats when this skill is active**

 **Aura strikes**

 **-Cost: 10 AP/strike; toggle skill-**

 **Infusing aura into your strikes is critical to making your strikes stronger, and has the added effect of interacting harmfully with the Grimm.**

 **+30% Damage against all enemies when activated**

 **+70% Damage against Grimm hen activated**

 **Aura infusion**

 **-Cost: Varies; Active skill-**

 **Infusing your aura into objects or others may lead to different results. With people it is generally observed that aura is transferred. With objects, aura may bind an object to the aura signature of the caster, power dust, or a range of other effects.**

 **Skill book – Aura control –**

 **-Passive-**

 **As the level of aura a person grows, aura becomes easier to control, yet control may be refined to manipulate aura within the body to specific patterns, which lead to the creation of the auric arts.**

 **Control of the aura within your body**

That's…a lot of skills. I haven't tried moving around my aura in my body without first learning the skill by a skill book, so the skill makes sense; the other skills are pretty useful, too. I particularly like aura strike, although the power of aura channeling is going to be VERY useful. If I can get the cost of aura strike down I'll just leave it on all the time. Aura control will allow me to experiment with my aura. Making weapons out of it seems like a good idea, like in that fanfiction, Silver. That idea will have to wait, though. I'm still ignoring the "by Monty Oum part, though. I'm pretty sure that someone is screwing with me on that. I then absorbed the skill books.

So now let's dive into the unknown. What could go wrong? Upon opening the skill tree with a thought there's a near and organized list of skills in more of a list than branch pattern. It makes me curious as to why it's called a tree, rather than a skill skop, or something. Just from a glance I see some interesting things. Aura techniques, mostly, but also some passives, toggle skills, and the like. There are four tabs at the top of the tree labeled as 'Aura' 'Combat', 'Magic', the most ominous one, 'Grimm', and 'Alteration'

I stiffened up on the Grimm tab, but focused on what's at hand. The skills in the tree I'm looking at are in the aura category. The skills are about what you'd expect. There was one about making aura bend light into illusions, making aura flammable, conducting electricity, a sort of telekinesis, and blah, blah, blah. I focused on a passive called ' aura charge', which wasn't really useful unless I was going to use my aura to power electrical objects with aura. I looked around the screen and saw the basic information on the skill, as well as a button marked as 'Learn?', and beneath it '2 perk points'.

It seems you buy the skills with perk points. I'm glad I've been saving those points up. Skills like passives can double parts of my stats, while spending points just increases them by a little. It's far more efficient to buy the skills, level them up while working on a stat, and get results.

I checked on the other two tabs and saw a few interesting things. In the tabs you could buy titles as well as skills, and on skills you already had you could level them up for a perk point. Combat had skills like my polearm proficiency skill, aura strikes, and stance, which I'd forgotten about since it seemed like a kind of freebie skill, but it mostly had various fighting techniques. Magic had skills related to elementals, although I couldn't buy any summon elemental books. I guess I need to find the books, then. However, there was a separate part of the tree that had skills like mana bolt, telekinesis, and fireball. There were more exotic ones, of course, but those were the ones lower down the tree.

However, those skills needed a skill called 'Mana', which you can't buy. You need one hundred INT to acquire the skill. Once you get it, though, you can do some serious stuff with it. Most of the skills could be done through aura, but there was one perk, called 'Magical soul' which seemed to combine the section of magical skills and the aura skill tree, which will make my aura skills more powerful by combining them with the magic skills, combine my MP pool (which I don't have) with my aura, and a few other less prominent things.

Getting the 'Magical soul' and 'Mana' skills seemed like a fantastic idea, however, the skills were a bit far off for my current level. Even if I dumped all my points into my INT I would only be about halfway to the 'Mana' skill. So it's finally time to go to the most interesting skill tree. Grimm.

The skill tree looks interesting enough at a glance, but when you pay attention it seems pretty ominous. There are skills like 'Murder craze' and 'Death touch'. Admittedly, those two are the ones that sound the worst. The other ones are mostly more tame. 'Scent of death', for example, allows me to sense when a death occurs around me, and to "smell" the amount of death a person has caused. Shadow rush is apparently a Grimm skill, too.

Similar to the magic tree, there's a section of the tree that could be a tab unto itself. It starts with a skill called 'corrupt', which will…Make me part Grimm…That might be an oversimplification, however. The description of the skill says that the level of my corruption may be adjusted, and doesn't rise over time or anything. It also doesn't affect me psychologically. At full corruption I look like a sort of humanoid Grimm with wings. The description mentions a skill called 'Grimm form' that turns me into any Grimm whose remains I've tasted. I'll be avoiding that skill since I'm not in a rush to put black demon sludge into my mouth.

To elaborate on corruption, the more corrupt I am, the less AP I have. At full corruption I have half of my total AP, and at half corruption I have three fourths of my total AP. The more corrupt I am, the less Grimm are inclined to attack me, since they'd prefer to hunt people with more pure aura. I don't care much to look into aura purity right now. I might look into it later. Anyways, corruption will reduce my aura capacity, but it will make me physically stronger. At half corruption I have 50% more physical stats. This means that at full corruption I have half of my aura and I have double my VIT, STR, and DEX.

The final change in the corruption skill is that it makes my aura skills different than usual. My basic aura skills such as aura arrow will be able to pierce aura, namely. They won't do any more damage or anything like that. With my corruption I'll also be able to use some very powerful skills.

The skills after corruption were few, but very powerful. There was the one called 'Grimm form', but also something that seemed like a better shadow rush, shadow travel, which was like teleportation, and seemed similar to the shadow travel in the Percy Jackson books, and a skill that could materialize darkness into Grimm.

The reason I looked into the corruption skill so much was that I could get that extremely powerful skill right now for 5 Points. Sold!

 **Corruption**

 **-Cost: 1% of your AP/ 2% corruption; Toggle skill-**

 **You can now "Corrupt" yourself to turn yourself into a Grimm or Grimm hybrid! While a Grimm you may use High Grimm skills, your physical abilities increase drastically, your aura skills become slightly more powerful, and Grimm are less inclined to attack you.**

Now that I had dealt with the Grimm category I corrupted myself just by 4% to train the skill up. The moment I did it I felt a shiver going through me. It was like if someone had taken a cold needle to my spine, except it wasn't at all painful. In fact, it was weirdly pleasant.

I could feel the corruption ripple throughout my body. I could feel my body changing to suit the corruption. I saw my skin turn a tad darker, and everything internal seemed to be…better. I could see better, I felt stronger overall. I did notice that despite the good things I felt colder. I wasn't as cold as when I began the corruption process, but it was like that coldness had seeped throughout my body while I wasn't looking. I wasn't colder physically, but my soul was less bright, and thus less warm. Not physically warm, but on a metaphysical level.

After a minute of the corruption I got used to the cold feeling. I could ignore it easily enough. I also ignored the fact that I wasn't quite human anymore.

 **Due to a good choice in skills your WIS has risen by 1**

It seems the gamer ability approves of my purchase. Now for the final tab on the skill tree window, which was 'Alteration'. Unlike the previous tabs I had no idea what this one meant. I suspected that it might be like the alteration spells in the elder scrolls games, but I saw a spell of transmutation in the magic tab. So I opened it to find out.

The Alteration tab was drastically different from the others. It had a list of the skills I already had. I focused on shadow rush and saw a description of it pop up. Under the description I now had a list of upgrades for my speed and damage of the rush. There were also some other more unique upgrades. Between the upgrades list and the description was the word "UPGRADES". I instantly figured out what this meant. I could upgrade my skills to be better than they are. I opened the first upgrade I saw, which silences my steps when shadow rushing, and saw it costs one perk point. The other upgrade I could get other than the damage or speed thing would make me invisible when in shadow run when not in direct sunlight or moonlight. I got the silencing one since the invisibility one costed eight points.

I could immediately see the upgrades effect when I looked at shadow rush in my skills list.

 **Shadow rush – lv.4**

 **-Active Cost: 40 AP-**

 **Lunge at your opponent in a mass of darkness and attack them. You are harder to hit and you hit harder in this attack.**

 **+65% Damage in rush**

 **+35% Speed in rush**

 **Blur effect**

 **Steps are silent when shadow rushing**

It was about as expected, but I wanted to make sure that the upgrade really did take effect, so I popped into an ID and tested it, and sure enough, my steps were silent. This would help when I wanted to sneak around, which I should really work on. I'll want to sneak into white fang outposts eventually, and the sooner I get the skills to do so the better.

I looked back into my skills list in alteration and looked at my other skills that could be upgraded. The only skills that couldn't be upgraded were the gamer's body and mind, observe, and aura infusion. Aura had an upgrade to make any aura attacks against Grimm do 20% more damage for a point, and I bought that, as well as the second and third tier of the upgrade for a total of 60% more damage against Grimm for three points. Another upgrade I bought was in aura control to apply outside my body for two more points. I wanted a range to skills like aura infusion. If I couldn't get to an ally I could still heal them with the aura infusion skill, as well as whenever I decide to get a healing skill. Those suckers were more expensive than I was willing to pay for at the moment, though, so I passed them up.

While I looked at the upgrades in polearm proficiency I saw there was an upgrade to combine fighting styles. I realized I hadn't bought one yet and felt like hitting myself in the head. Fighting styles were easy to acquire and useful. There was no reason not to get one. I could also get any skills that catch my eye if I stopped by a bookstore. Why hadn't I thought of buying books earlier? Not buying books is practically a sin right now. So I bought the upgrade for three points and set off to Tukson's book trade, which was the only bookstore I knew in remnant.

I traveled to Tukson's book trade, which I found on my map easily, through the Grimm ID. I didn't level up or anything, but I did level up once. Beating Roman's thugs had set me on the edge of level eleven, and completing the quest to get into Beacon had pushed me past most of the level. So I killed two alpha beowolves on the way, which was really easy with aura strikes and the upgrades to my aura. I had a feeling that the Beacon initiation would be a breeze with everybody else and the skills.

I escaped in an alley and entered the store. Immediately after I heard "Welcome to Tukson's book trade! I'm Tukson. Is there something you're looking for?" I observed Tukson quickly.

 **Tukson La'mar**

 **Title: White fang associate**

 **Level: 12**

 **HP: 800**

 **AP: 550**

 **Description: Tukson once worked as a librarian and construction worker years ago. He bought his bookstore, Tukson's book trade, and works hard to keep it going. He joined the White fang not long after acquiring the store, due to seeing how faunus have been treated for years. He now regrets this choice, however, and wishes to leave.**

Poor guy. I didn't know the construction worker part, but it's hardly important. "I'm looking for instruction manuals on fighting styles for spears. The less used the style the better. I might buy some other stuff, too." If I could use a style nobody knows, it could catch them off guard. Also, it makes me feel all special.

Tukson looked thoughtful for a second and said "Hold on." He disappeared for a minute, and I looked around some of the books, finding some on various subjects and abilities. Then Tukson came back with about twenty books or so, some of which seemed really old.

He dropped the books on the counter and said "Some of these styles I know for a fact aren't good, but these ones are supposedly great. Especially this one, but it's in a dead language that's lost to time. I don't even know why I bought it. I guess I try to keep with out motto, every book under the sun, the best I can.

I stopped looking at the other books and looked at all the books Tukson had. I observed the one he had pointed at.

 **Skill book – Tongue of the dragon**

 **Tongue of the dragon fighting technique**

 **-Fighting technique-**

 **Thousands of years ago, a tribe of warriors called the dragons of Pyroar existed to defend a city lost to time. Among the dragons was the deadliest sect, called the tongues. They were admired and feared for their brutally efficient fighting style supposedly created by gods. In reality, the style was created by the founder of the order of the dragons, Xian Xiao-Long, who dedicated his life and soul to create the ultimate fighting styles for all manner of weaponry. His style for the spear incorporated techniques meant to disable an opponent through pain, and attack their blind spots or vital spots with stabs.**

 **+20% to all physical stats when using this style**

"Uhhh, yeah, I'll take that for sure." I also picked one other book from what Tukson recommended that was almost entirely defensive. I was, after all, mostly a mage build, even if I was able to use a spear when I ran out of aura, or sneak off when I cared to.

I picked out various other books on ammo craftsmanship, weapon craftsmanship, human anatomy (Grimm are apparently just a soupy mess on the inside. So basically just hit the head. That tends to do the trick.) , and wilderness survival. All of them were skill books.

Tukson raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't say anything. What do the kids in Remnant do to make buying books on weapons and human anatomy normal?!

"Have a nice day!" Tukson called as I exited the store. I entered an alley and trained in a Beowolf ID for the rest of the night. "Weird ass kids." Tukson muttered as he saw me disappear into thin air. "Always teleporting and learning human vital spots."


	5. Apology and a replacement

**An apology and a replacement**

I'd like to just say straight off the bat that this story, remnant of a gamer, is being put onto hiatus until further notice. HOWEVER, I haven't been dicking around the past few months doing nothing. I wrote out the plot for two new stories, one of which will hopefully be something I can fully commit to putting out about one a week or so. I'm planning on calling it grimm souls but it's subject to change. It's not a self insert this time. In fact, the Main character isn't even in the remnant we're all familiar with until the second arc.

To give a brief idea of it, out main character (who I need a name for. Any suggestions?) has his soul plucked out of the void and stuffed into a grimm by Salem in an attempt to make more efficient and smarter grimm. She becomes disappointed with the result and lets our main character loose onto the world. Now, our character doesn't remember much. Flashes, kind of. You'll see. And he wanders the world of remnant. There's a small problem, however. He was born about a hundred years too early to meet the cast. Whoops.

With the addition of volume 4 and 5 to table I have some really good ideas (in my opinion) as to what I want to do. Seriously, in Remnant shit went down hard before the age RWBY takes place in.

Now before I leave you off I want to apologize again for leaving you all hanging for so long without letting you know whether this was going to continue or not. I don't think writing a story without putting the whole thing on paper was a good idea in the first place and in addition the math was just too overwhelming for me. Luckily I learned an immense amount from my mistakes here and I hope to apply everything that was good here in my next fiction.

Thank you all for reading my story and I hope you all will try my next story when I release the first chapter of the next book (hopefully sometime this month but no promises)


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